Ongoing discussions about how to finish the 2019-20 NHL season appear to be making progress this week with various reports that the NHL and NHL Players’ Association (NHLPA) are devising an unprecedented 24-team playoff format. While the timeline to close out the season remains undecided, the playoff format being discussed would create a postseason unlike anything the league has ever seen.
According to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, the playoff structure is expected to include an additional best-of-five play-in round in which teams that had very little chance of making the playoffs — like the 12th-seeded Montreal Canadiens in the East — have a chance to earn a spot in the 16-team bracket.
NHL Players’ Association (NHLPA) Executive Director Donald Fehr (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)
The top four seeds in each conference would receive a bye to the traditional 16-team, best-of-seven series bracket, leaving the 5-12 seeds to battle it out in the play-in round. As it stands, the Eastern Conference playoff would look like this:
Play-In Round:
No. 5 Pittsburgh Penguins vs. No. 12 Montreal Canadiens
No. 6 Carolina Hurricanes vs. No. 11 NY Rangers
No. 7 NY Islanders vs. No. 10 Florida Panthers
No. 8 Toronto Maple Leafs vs. No. 9 Columbus Blue Jackets
Byes: No. 1 Boston, No. 2 Tampa Bay, No. 3 Washington, No. 4 Philadelphia
The winners of the play-in round will advance to face the teams receiving a bye in a traditional bracket without re-seeding.
NHLPA executive board approved this format on Friday, although certain details still need to be fleshed out, according to CBS Sports. Technically, the NHLPA’s decision only authorized further negotiation on the format, so no official decisions have been made, but the 24-team format has been approved.
Here’s how the proposed format could affect the Bruins:
How it Affects the Bruins
As the top seed in the Eastern Conference, the Bruins wouldn’t participate in the play-in round. That being said, there are still a few concerns that could make things weird for the defending Eastern Conference champions.
Under the proposal, the top-four teams receiving byes would play a three-game round-robin to determine seeding. This means that the Bruins, who built an eight-point lead over their closest competitors (Tampa Bay) in the Eastern Conference over the course of 70 games, could lose their number one seed as a result of three games.
Despite being the top seed in the Eastern Conference, the Bruins might not get the most favorable match-up when their postseason kicks off. (Jess Starr/The Hockey Writers)
On top of that, even if the Bruins did re-earn their number one seed, there’s no guarantee that they’d face the weakest opponent remaining. Since the 16-team bracket taking place after the play-in round would proceed without re-seeding, the top seed would play the winner of the eight/nine seed match-up between the Maple Leafs and the Blue Jackets, regardless of how the other series’ go. So, even if the lowest-seeded team in the conference, (the Canadiens) knocked off No. 5 Pittsburgh in the play-in round, the top-seeded team wouldn’t be shifted to take on the weakest opponent.
As a result of this, there could be a scenario where the fourth-seeded team (the one that performs the worst in the round-robin) could match-up with the 12th-seeded team while the top-seeded team has to play the eight-seed.
Cassidy’s Concerns
The proposed format threatens the advantages that the Bruins earned during the regular season. As a result, Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy has already expressed his dislike for the proposed format:
“I don’t have a say in all of this, but I’d rather it be 16 teams, four rounds of four-out-of-seven, let’s go,” Cassidy told 98.5 The Sports Hub. “That’s the integrity of the playoffs. It’s always been that way.”
Cassidy’s concerns are certainly understandable. The Bruins were the top team in the NHL by a fair margin when the league was suspended. Boston was the only team to reach the 100-point mark. They had an eleven point lead over the Flyers, the fourth-ranked team in the conference (though the Flyers did have one game in hand).
Boston Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)
The Bruins earned that top seed over the course of 70 games, and yet it could be lost as a result of three. It’s not hard to see why that could be tough to swallow. As Cassidy mentioned, however, there’s no perfect solution. Somebody’s going to be upset no matter what.
“Hopefully we get to that 16 in the right way and it doesn’t hurt us. I guess that’s where I’m coming from, that we don’t get kind of screwed in this process, because we shouldn’t be. We should be rewarded for our regular season. But I don’t think any scenario is going to be perfectly fair, I understand that.”
Nothing is set in stone yet, but all signs point to the 24-team format if and when the NHL resumes. On that note, with the ongoing coronavirus crisis, there are additional factors that are out of the league’s hands. We all want to see hockey return, but any return to the game must ensure the safety of players, team staff, arena workers, media, etc., which the league is still trying to figure out.
Bruce Cassidy has expressed his dislike for the proposed playoff format. (Amy Irvin / The Hockey Writers)
So, at this point, the question is still if the league will come back this season. If it does, though, nothing will be given to the Bruins. After all, this is playoff hockey, and everything must be earned.
PARIS (AP) — French judicial authorities are investigating the disappearance of two Paralympic athletes from Congo who recently competed in the Paris Games, the prosecutor’s office in the Paris suburb of Bobigny confirmed on Thursday.
Prosecutors opened the investigation on Sept. 7, after members of the athletes’ delegation warned authorities of their disappearance two days before.
Le Parisien newspaper reported that shot putter Mireille Nganga and Emmanuel Grace Mouambako, a visually impaired sprinter who was accompanied by a guide, went missing on Sept. 5, along with a third person.
The athletes’ suitcases were also gone but their passports remained with the Congolese delegation, according to an official with knowledge of the investigation, who asked to remain anonymous as they were not allowed to speak publicly about the case.
The Paralympic Committee of the Democratic Republic of Congo did not respond to requests for information from The Associated Press.
Nganga — who recorded no mark in the seated javelin and shot put competitions — and Mouambako were Congo’s flag bearers at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games, organizers said.
An investigator gave the World Anti-Doping Agency a pass on its handling of the inflammatory case involving Chinese swimmers, but not without hammering away at the “curious” nature of WADA’s “silence” after examining Chinese actions that did not follow rules designed to safeguard global sports.
WADA on Thursday released the full decision from Eric Cottier, the Swiss investigator it appointed to analyze its handling of the case involving the 23 Chinese swimmers who remained eligible despite testing positive for performance enhancers in 2021.
In echoing wording from an interim report issued earlier this summer, Cottier said it was “reasonable” that WADA chose not to appeal the Chinese anti-doping agency’s explanation that the positives came from contamination.
“Taking into consideration the particularities of the case, (WADA) appears … to have acted in accordance with the rules it has itself laid out for anti-doping organizations,” Cottier wrote.
But peppered throughout his granular, 56-page analysis of the case was evidence and reminders of how WADA disregarded some of China’s violations of anti-doping protocols. Cottier concluded this happened more for the sake of expediency than to show favoritism toward the Chinese.
“In retrospect at least, the Agency’s silence is curious, in the face of a procedure that does not respect the fundamental rules, and its lack of reaction is surprising,” Cottier wrote of WADA’s lack of fealty to the world anti-doping code.
Travis Tygart, the CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and one of WADA’s fiercest critics, latched onto this dynamic, saying Cottier’s information “clearly shows that China did not follow the rules, and that WADA management did nothing about it.”
One of the chief complaints over the handling of this case was that neither WADA nor the Chinese gave any public notice upon learning of the positive tests for the banned heart medication Temozolomide, known as TMZ.
The athletes also were largely kept in the dark and the burden to prove their innocence was taken up by Chinese authorities, not the athletes themselves, which runs counter to what the rulebook demands.
Despite the criticisms, WADA generally welcomed the report.
“Above all, (Cottier) reiterated that WADA showed no bias towards China and that its decision not to appeal the cases was reasonable based on the evidence,” WADA director general Olivier Niggli said. “There are however certainly lessons to be learned by WADA and others from this situation.”
Tygart said “this report validates our concerns and only raises new questions that must be answered.”
Cottier expanded on doubts WADA’s own chief scientist, Olivier Rabin, had expressed over the Chinese contamination theory — snippets of which were introduced in the interim report. Rabin was wary of the idea that “a few micrograms” of TMZ found in the kitchen at the hotel where the swimmers stayed could be enough to cause the group contamination.
“Since he was not in a position to exclude the scenario of contamination with solid evidence, he saw no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of contamination as described by the Chinese authorities,” Cottier wrote.
Though recommendations for changes had been expected in the report, Cottier made none, instead referring to several comments he’d made earlier in the report.
Key among them were his misgivings that a case this big was largely handled in private — a breach of custom, if not the rules themselves — both while China was investigating and after the file had been forwarded to WADA. Not until the New York Times and German broadcaster ARD reported on the positives were any details revealed.
“At the very least, the extraordinary nature of the case (23 swimmers, including top-class athletes, 28 positive tests out of 60 for a banned substance of therapeutic origin, etc.), could have led to coordinated and concerted reflection within the Agency, culminating in a formal and clearly expressed decision to take no action,” the report said.
WADA’s executive committee established a working group to address two more of Cottier’s criticisms — the first involving what he said was essentially WADA’s sloppy recordkeeping and lack of formal protocol, especially in cases this complex; and the second a need to better flesh out rules for complex cases involving group contamination.
The French league’s legal commission has ordered Paris Saint-Germain to pay Kylian Mbappé the 55 million euros ($61 million) in unpaid wages that he claims he’s entitled to, the league said Thursday.
The league confirmed the decision to The Associated Press without more details, a day after the France superstar rejected a mediation offer by the commission in his dispute with his former club.
